Call Your MoCs And Demand That They Keep Doing Everything They Can to Reunite Migrant Families, July 26 2018 Edition

Call your MoCs and demand that they keep doing everything they can to reunite migrant families.

We are reposting this follow-up item which initially ran on July 10, 2018 because the Trump administration has formally and unequivocally missed the deadline to reunite all children aged five and under with their families.

That deadline was, in fact, July 10, and the administration had signaled that it would likely miss it. See this ABC News story confirming as much:

We need to stay on this. OTYCD will periodically update and re-run this post as long as the Trump administration fails to do the right thing.

Original text follows.

Team Trump is still doing a lousy job of reuniting the migrant families that it parted at the border under its disgusting and immoral zero-tolerance policy.

This is unconscionable. Those kids need to be with their parents. They never should have been separated in the first place.

Others on Twitter (apologies as I cannot recall who) pointed out that it’s in Team Trump’s interest to delay and drag their feet as long as possible, because the longer this goes, the harder this becomes to fix. If the delays go on long enough, Team Trump could try to argue it’s too late to fix the problem, and a court could agree with them.

Also alarming is the information relayed in a July 6, 2018 tweet storm by Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state, which we will reproduce here:

My office recently learned the shocking revelation from @HHSGov that reunification could mean placing a separated child with ANY long-term sponsor — regardless of whether it’s their parents, other family in the US, family back in their home country or in long-term foster care.

[Interjecting to add an OH HELL NO to the notion that ‘reunification’ means placing migrant kids with anyone except the parents they came here with]

If true, this interpretation blatantly ignores the terms of the court order. The federal government has also recently admitted that reunification is being used as a bargaining chip to induce parents to agree to voluntary deportation.

We cannot trust that these families will actually be reunified. Today I led a group of six

governors in demanding @HHSGov & @DHSgov take responsibility for the dire effects

of the “zero-tolerance policy” and trauma inflicted on nearly 3,000 children.

The governors who joined Inslee in fighting Team Trump’s sick policy are from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Oregon. If you’re from Washington state or any of the other five, please call your governor’s office to say thanks.